How The War In Ukraine Impacts World Hunger
Countries in East, West, Middle, and Southern Africa, including Angola, Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria, have been grappling with soaring food prices due to extreme climate and weather events such as floods, landslides, droughts, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The war in Ukraine is having a drastic negative impact.
Russia’s invasion has pushed global food prices to new heights. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, increased 12.6 percent from February to March. The March index is the highest it has been since the measure was created in the 1990s.
Russia and Ukraine are top exporters of barley, sunflowers, and corn and account for about a third of the world’s wheat exports. Nigeria is the world’s fourth-largest wheat importer and receives much of its imports from Russia and Ukraine. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) buys half of the wheat it distributes around the world from Ukraine. With the war, supplies are squeezed, and prices rise, including fuel, increasing the cost of transporting food in and to the region. Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan source more than 40 percent of their wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. As fields turn into battlefields, a solution for food production must be found.
“One of our biggest concerns is the harvest. There are food shortages in Ukraine as the supply system is struggling, and as the conflict continues it will create a global food crisis.
This couldn’t have come at a worse time. In countries such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen, food prices are reaching record highs. The number of people who are food insecure is soaring. Needs were already outstripping available resources before the war, and now the cost of buying and transporting food has just become a lot more expensive.”
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